JaJa Uma! Quartet

These OVAs are fantastic if you go in with proper expectations. It's a 50 minute ad for a manga, and it's not going to spend time on the basics of a story, like telling audience who the characters are or why things are happening.

Instead, this is pure animation spectacle with a big "buy the manga if you want to know what any of this is about" sign taped to the end. The OVAs are directed by Yashuchika Nagaoka, director of the outstanding Crest and Banner of the Stars series, and feature early career work from current star action animators like Yutaka Nakamura, who get to ... go off on some very ambitious and well-executed action scenes. The character designs are attractive and the characters have fun personalities. It's an easy, entertaining watch if you just go with it and don't expect any context for the action scenes that make up 90% of the run time

This is animated way better than it deserves to be.

Playing card themed heroes battle ... who are these people? Who is this guy with bad grammar and a flying drill? Who is the leggy wolf lady? What's up with the Cookie Monster-eyed ninjas? Who's this Joker guy or the Red Lobster guy? More to the point, who are these heroes, zipping around, crashing vehicles, fighting gargantuan chess pieces? Who knows? The world-building and characterization in this brief OVA are as shallow as a playing card is thick.

A bit more meat on the story's bones wouldn't have hurt. The world of table-top-game-themed heroes and villains ... is, admittedly, unique, but it's not really enough to engage the viewer. Maybe if one were a fan of the manga or the video game this would resonate more. Perhaps that was the idea behind the OVA, to give fans a chance to see these characters clash and shout in a big ol' brawl.

But if you're not a fan, what's this OVA got going for it? Not a heck of a lot, frankly. With zero story or character depth, what else is there? The English dub has subpar acting. The character designs are standard 90s magical girl stuff. The music is unmemorable. There isn't a lot of fan service, if one's seeking titllation. So, why watch it? Well, the quality of the animation is actually really, really good. The action is dynamic and sometimes quite inventive. So, give it look if all you want to see is nicely animated girls run and punch stuff for an hour.

JaJa Uma! Quartet, known as Wild Cardz in english, is one of the most boring and pointless series that I have ever seen. The story stars a group of 4 girls, each themed after playing cards, as they protect the card kingdom from a giant chess piece. And that's it. The story never tells us anything important such as, oh, I don't know, maybe why our four protagonists have super powers or how they met, or even why they hold the title Crown Knights, Heroes to the nation. We never learn where the chess piece came from, or even the villain behind the whole thing. ... As such, its impossible to be invested since we never learn the stakes and have no idea about our character's backstories and why we should care. Of course, there is one character we need to look at extensivly. A chinese character named Chee Chuukai. He is, in my opinion, one of the most offensive characters in any form of media ever. I have only seen the english dub, and that proves extensivly why this character is terrible. He talks in a stupid just off the boat accent and refers to himself as me and speaks in a manner that makes Jar Jar Binks look like the height of cultural sensitivity. To top off the shows crimes, the dub sucks. The only two voices of note in this show are for Joe Diamond and Coco Heartful. Joe is voiced by Debora Rabbi, also known as Angora Deb, who is probably best known as Leina Vance from Queen's Blade and Aika Sumeragi from Agent Aika, and she is God awful here. She voices Joe as if she just read here lines and is trying to do a cute little girl sound during the recording process. As such, if she isn't screeching like crazy, she's talking as if she is a robot who does not understand how "the human beings children" talk. But even that pales in comparison to the pain of Apollo Smile as Coco Heartful. If you have seen Bennet the Sage's review, you know Apollo's strange history in Anime, a pop singer turned "live-action anime girl" turned voice actress. That doesn't begin to describe how annoying she sounds. Thankfully her character doesn't speak much, but everytime she does, her annoyingly upbeat voices causes cats and dogs to start making noise.

Honestly, Wild Cardz is one of the worst shows I have seen in a long time. Bad voice acting, okay art, non-memorable sound, and a story that ends in one of worst, most pointless ways ever, thre is no reason to like it. There is no fan service, which would at least give us a reason to use it in some way, poor action, and it's only funny if you don't mind looking like a giant jerk for laughing at the Chinese. Bottom line, stay as far away as possible from JaJa Uma! Quartet.